Pages

Monday, December 30, 2013

The Butter Trick

Too cute not to share. My cat, Aria, 1½, sure loves her doggy, Keesha, 14½. Keesha is so gentle with her little cat, letting her sleep on her 'n all.

Keesha has lived with a number of cats in her 14 years and none of them were friendly. Little Aria, who came from Willie Anicic out near Niagara Falls, was thought to be half Siamese and half tabby but who looks exactly like an Egyptian Abyssinian, doesn't she. She is all of 6 lbs fully grown. I wanted Keesha to have a feline pal, and so I worked on 'their relationship.' Aria hissed/spit at her doggy the first week or so, as all the cats do. But, instead of allowing their natural distrust of each other to determine their relationship, I used the butter trick.

What is the butter trick? A lady in a store told me that a friend of hers had heard about the butter trick - she covered her kitten in butter and her dog licked it off and they were sleeping together within weeks.

With Aria's hissing and Keesha's barking back at her, it was a bit scary putting butter on the little 2½ month-old kitten and holding her for the dog to lick for sure! I only put a small pat of butter on her side, and held her in my lap while I sat cross-legged on the floor. Keesha was called over and I pointed to the butter. She delightedly licked it off the tiny kitten who, when I let her go, ran off as quick as she could to a high perch to wash herself with dignity.

After another session or so of the 'butter trick,' when Keesha and I came home from a walk, our wee kitten was waiting on the stairs for us. She rubbed herself under her dog, and against her dog, purring loudly. I was flabbergasted. It was amazing to see after all the hissing and growling and scratching she has endured from our other cats over the years.

Here is a little cell phone video of Aria as a young kitten playing with an origami ball. Keesha wants to play with her, but doesn't know how to without hurting her (listen, I know my dog - not all dogs would be like this, but my old Springer Spaniel has a wonderful disposition).

June 15, 2012 - two days after Willie dropped her off. She'd be about 9 or 10 weeks old in this family video.

A month or so ago. My kids are tired of all the pics and videos of these two, but I never tire of being amazed at how close they are. Unfortunately, my doggy has an inner ear problem, behind the eardrum. She can't be operated on due to her age - vet says she wouldn't survive the anaesthetic - and because the area is too close to the brain. I've spent two grand on treatment for her ear, and at this point, I am keeping it as clean as possible, medicated drops, flushing with saline, and she is on gravol, which helps with the motion sickness and is enabling her to eat more easily again. She still energetically drags me through the streets on our walks, is loving and happy, so she's doing alright, the sweet old lady.

About Me

BRENDA CLEWS is a poet, painter, dancer, video-maker, mother, friend, muse, mystery-maker, a lover, a solitary, believer in divine sybaritism. 'While we all have an instinctual sense of what 'art' is, it's from a 'Weltanschauung' that is itself art because it is part of the process of conscious life in a world that is a work of art.

Our universe's creativity is beyond our wildest imaginings.'

Brenda was born in Zimbabwe in the then small mining town of Chinhoyi. When she was two her father, D. Richard Clews, who was a geologist, moved her and her mother to Kafue National Park in Zambia, then the largest game park in Africa, as he joined a mining team looking for copper, and where her two brothers were born.

She cites her early years spent in the jungle, barefoot, living in a compound of mud huts, with many wild animals and the wonderful Ndembu people for her deep resonance with the beauty, strangeness and brilliance of the tribal mind and the natural world.

After the time in the jungle came a year in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and then her father took the family to England where he obtained a doctorate in Geochemistry and accepted a position in Canada. Brenda has lived in Canada since then.

Brenda has a full-length collection of poetry, Tidal Fury, with Guernica Editions, 2016. She has a forthcoming novella, Fugue in Green, with Quattro Books, 2017. LyricalMyrical Press published her chapbook, the luminist poems, in 2013. She hosts Poetry & Music Salons in Toronto.

She has edited university textbooks and creative writing, taught writing, written articles for newspapers, taught Kundalini Yoga, done temporary office work, and dog sitting, while maintaining a reclusive lifestyle of writing and painting. She raised two wonderful children as a single mother. She has a degree in Fine Arts and abandoned a PhD in English Lit many years ago.

Brenda has had solo art shows at York University (2000), Q Space (2013) and Urban Gallery (2014), and been in a number of group art shows including 'Birthtales' (1992) at A Space, 'Birth2' (2004) at Ayer Lofts in the US, '5 By 5' (2013) at The Gladstone Hotel, Yellow House Gallery (2014), SuperWonder Gallery (2016) and Arcadia Gallery (2016). Her artwork has appeared in 'Addiction to Perfection' and as two journal covers and in a poster for ‘ARM Magazine.’

Her poetry has been published in print journals, like 'Tessera,' and 'ARM Journal,' and on-line at sites, including 'Qarrtsiluni,' 'Mothers Movement Online,' and 'The Browsing Corner' (she is not good at submitting her work). She presented papers yearly at conferences at York University and OISE on the maternal body from 2001-2006. Her video poetry has been featured at 'CrossBridge' (an international multidisciplinary journal), and 'Moving Poems ('best poetry videos on the web').

She is a multi-media artist whose approach to a topic may include poetry, painting, theory, dance, recordings, and video. Brenda's oeuvre focuses on the plethora, the multiple callings, the obsessive muse, the prism rather than the spotlight, or on multiple spotlights. She writes, "Where else do you flee? How do you combine yourself?"